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The committee makes recommendations to the CDFA secretary on all matters pertaining to the department’s standardization program, which ensures that fresh fruit, nuts and vegetables meet minimum market standards.
The standardization program is funded by California’s fruit and vegetable producers to protect consumers and the agricultural industry from substandard products in the marketplace.
Standardization laws establish minimum standards for maturity, quality, size, standard container and pack and container markings.
Inspections, conducted by California’s agricultural commissioners and sealers, take place in fields, packinghouses, wholesale markets, retail distribution centers, retail outlets and highway inspection stations.
Five member vacancies are available. One vacancy represents the fresh fruit sector (oranges, table grapes and other citrus fruit), three vacancies represents the fresh vegetable sector (with one representing lettuce, tomatoes or mixed vegetables), and one vacancy representing other commodities. Individuals serving on the committee must have a financial interest, either personal or through employment, in a commodity represented.
The term of office for committee members is two years. Members receive no compensation, but are entitled to payment of necessary traveling expenses in accordance with the rules of the Department of Personnel Administration.
Individuals interested in being considered for an appointment should send a letter of consideration and include a letter of recommendation from the agricultural sector.
Nominations will be accepted until the positions are filled.
Applications should be sent to Mr. Steve Patton, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Inspection and Compliance Branch, 1220 ‘N’ Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, or emailed to
For further information on the standardization program and committee vacancies, contact Steve Patton at 916-445-2180.
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“Bioelements operated a blatant price-fixing scheme by requiring online retailers to sell its products at high prices,” Harris said. “Price manipulation harms consumers, competition and our business community. We will continue to be vigilant in protecting our markets from these kinds of abuses.”
The settlement is one of the first applications of California's strict, pro-consumer antitrust law banning vertical price-fixing in the wake of a controversial 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened federal law in this area.
Vertical price-fixing occurs when companies along the distribution chain conspire to set the price of a product or service at an artificially high level.
In California, prices must be set independently – and competitively – by distributors and retailers.
Bioelements markets a line of human beauty-care products under its BIOELEMENTS trademark, offering skin products it claims have quasi-medicinal properties such as reducing wrinkles.
These products – known as “cosmesceuticals” because they supposedly merge the attributes of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals – are sold at beauty salons across California, as well as on the Internet.
An investigation initiated by Harris' predecessor as attorney general, Edmund G. Brown Jr., revealed evidence that since 2009, Bioelements had entered into dozens of contracts with other companies that required them to sell Bioelements' products online for at least as much as the retail prices prescribed by Bioelements. There were no express pricing requirements for products sold in person or in shops.
In doing so, Bioelements violated California's antitrust and unfair competition laws.
Under the settlement, in the form of a stipulated court judgment signed Tuesday by Riverside Superior Court Judge Harold W. Hopp, Bioelements is required to permanently refrain from fixing resale prices for its merchandise; inform distributors and retailers with whom Bioelements made price-fixing contracts that Bioelements considers the contracts void and will not try to enforce them; and pay a total of $51,000 in civil penalties and attorney fees.
The 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc. sharply curtailed federal antitrust law pertaining to vertical price-fixing, but did not affect California's strict state antitrust law.
In the last three years, the California Attorney General has sent two open letters to Congress urging passage of legislation reinstating federal safeguards against vertical price-fixing schemes like Bioelements'.
In February 2010, the attorney general obtained an injunction under California law against another cosmetics company, DermaQuest, Inc., which halted a price-fixing scheme similar to Bioelements'.
A copy of People v. Bioelements civil complaint and the stipulated judgment are attached to the press release online at www.ag.ca.gov .
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